Well, then you’d be incorrect. Have you been paying attention at all? Even your own argument illustrates why this is. Think about why theft is illegal and it should be immediately apparent why they are different.
You have a cow, I take the cow from you, you starve and die and I make money. That’s theft.
You have a cow, I create a perfect copy of that cow and take it home, we both get milk and beef, we both survive in our post-scarcity Star Trek like utopia. The fundamental definition of theft, the taking away of something that belongs to someone else, is impossible here.
If you steal a piece of art that devalues that art for everyone, which then deprives the producers of the art of income, they then starve, and I get to have a bit of fun that I could have gotten elsewhere for free, real free.
Look, the point here isn’t that piracy is some magical guilt-free action that gets everyone free stuff for no downside. I’m not arguing that it should be legal. I’m not arguing that it’s moral. But it is a fundamentally different crime than theft. We’ve been talking in circles about this for two days and it’s pretty clear that neither of us is going to move off our opinions on the matter. Agree to disagree, then?
I actually didnt know how you felt about it until this last post, and I mostly agree. Ive been seeing an aversion here from people to acknowledge the downsides of it though and thats been frustrating. And I even pirate stuff myself.
Well, then you’d be incorrect. Have you been paying attention at all? Even your own argument illustrates why this is. Think about why theft is illegal and it should be immediately apparent why they are different.
You have a cow, I take the cow from you, you starve and die and I make money. That’s theft.
You have a cow, I create a perfect copy of that cow and take it home, we both get milk and beef, we both survive in our post-scarcity Star Trek like utopia. The fundamental definition of theft, the taking away of something that belongs to someone else, is impossible here.
If you steal a piece of art that devalues that art for everyone, which then deprives the producers of the art of income, they then starve, and I get to have a bit of fun that I could have gotten elsewhere for free, real free.
That seems to fit your parameters there, no?
Look, the point here isn’t that piracy is some magical guilt-free action that gets everyone free stuff for no downside. I’m not arguing that it should be legal. I’m not arguing that it’s moral. But it is a fundamentally different crime than theft. We’ve been talking in circles about this for two days and it’s pretty clear that neither of us is going to move off our opinions on the matter. Agree to disagree, then?
I actually didnt know how you felt about it until this last post, and I mostly agree. Ive been seeing an aversion here from people to acknowledge the downsides of it though and thats been frustrating. And I even pirate stuff myself.